Reply #5: Update: The Mobal phone was so old that it wouldn't charge

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I didn't discover this till I was already in Europe.

It turned out that I didn't need to make any phone calls and that everywhere I stayed (except one private home) had wi-fi.

Then, around the end of July, some time during my stay in Sweden, my iPhone rang. I recognized the caller ID number as one of the robo-outfits that bothers me frequently ("The Disabled Veterans Association will be in your neighborhood to pick up any unwanted household items..."), so I refused the call. Then I saw that I had bars attributed to some Swedish phone company. I had bars in Iceland, too, so I made sure that 3G data was turned off (I had turned it off before leaving the country, just in case).

Everyone who called my U.S. number who wasn't a robocall got a message on my U.S. voice mail saying that I wasn't available by phone till August 5 and that they should send an e-mail, so I had no reason to answer any of the phone calls that came in.

While I was in Iceland, I got a text message from AT&T saying that they had turned international roaming on. But it was about three days after I had noticed it on my own.